I don’t think convenience is the enemy.
In fact, I think convenience can be a gift.
Modern medicine is convenient.
Accessible transportation is convenient.
Online grocery ordering can be life-changing for someone with a disability, chronic illness, or limited mobility.
Technology allows me to teach yoga to people I’ll probably never meet in person. That’s incredibly convenient—and incredibly beautiful.
Convenience, by itself, isn’t the problem.
The question is this:
When does convenience stop serving our values and start replacing them?
I think that’s one of the defining questions of our time.
We’re constantly encouraged to choose what’s faster.
What’s cheaper.
What’s easier.
What’s more efficient.
And sometimes that’s exactly the right choice.
I’m a spoonie.
I have days when ordering groceries online isn’t a luxury—it’s the only realistic option.
I have chronic pain, POTS, asthma, fibromyalgia, arthritis, and a body that occasionally reminds me that it has its own plans for the day.
Choosing the easier path isn’t laziness.
Sometimes it’s wisdom.
Sometimes it’s survival.
That’s why I get uncomfortable when conversations about values become rigid.
Life isn’t lived in absolutes.
It’s lived in context.
The challenge isn’t convenience itself.
The challenge is remembering to ask why we’re choosing it.
Am I ordering dinner because I’m exhausted after a long day and need to preserve the energy I have left?
Or because I’ve stopped paying attention to what my habits are creating?
Am I buying from a large retailer because it’s genuinely my only practical option?
Or because I didn’t want to spend ten extra minutes looking for an alternative?
Neither answer makes me a good person or a bad one.
But they do invite me to stay curious.
I’ve found that curiosity is one of the healthiest spiritual practices I know.
Not certainty.
Not guilt.
Curiosity.
What led me here?
What matters most in this moment?
Is there another way?
Sometimes the answer is no.
Sometimes the answer is yes.
The important thing is that I’m still asking.
There’s another side to this conversation that I don’t think we talk about enough.
Convenience has a way of making us passive.
Algorithms decide what we see.
Autoplay decides what we watch next.
Navigation apps tell us where to drive.
Recommendation engines decide what we buy.
None of those tools are inherently bad.
I use every one of them.
But every time I let something else make a decision for me, I lose a tiny opportunity to practice making intentional choices for myself.
That doesn’t mean rejecting technology.
It means refusing to live on autopilot.
One of the reasons I love both yoga and witchcraft is that neither one lets me stay asleep.
They ask me to pay attention.
To notice my breath.
To notice my body.
To notice my habits.
To notice the stories I’m telling myself.
Awareness always comes before transformation.
Maybe that’s why convenience deserves more attention than it usually gets.
Not because it’s wrong.
Because it’s powerful.
Powerful enough to shape our routines.
Our relationships.
Our spending.
Our priorities.
Even our identities.
So perhaps the goal isn’t to eliminate convenience.
Perhaps it’s simply to remain awake within it.
To choose convenience when it genuinely serves our well-being.
To choose the harder path when that’s what our values require.
And to remember that every decision, no matter how ordinary it seems, is quietly teaching us who we’re becoming.
I don’t think we’ll ever get that balance perfectly right.
I know I won’t.
But maybe that’s the point.
Living with integrity has never meant having all the answers.
It has always meant remaining willing to ask better questions.
And in a world constantly encouraging us not to think too hard about our choices...
That may be one of the most quietly radical things we can do.